1/7/2019 Emojis and Accessibility: The Dos and Don’ts of Including Emojis in Texts and EmailsRead Now![]() by Beth Finke (The Easterseals Blog) A friend sent me a text the other day that said this: “Wishing you a prosperous new year excited face with money symbols for eyes and stuck-out tongue excited face with money symbols for eyes and stuck-out tongue excited face with money symbols for eyes and stuck-out tongue excited face with money symbols for eyes and stuck-out tongue. You guys free tonight? Give me a call.” I never got to the part where I was supposed to give them a call. The emojis got in the way. Five years ago I published a post here about how some people who are blind access a program called VoiceOver to use an iPhone — VoiceOver parrots every letter we type into a text, and a key next to the space bar on the iPhone keypad lets us choose from lists and lists and lists of emojis to use with texts. VoiceOver reads the images out loud for those of us who can’t see them. Let me show you what I mean. Here’s a sampling of what I hear when choosing from the list of “Smileys and other people” emojis:
You get the picture. Some of the blind people I know tweet and text using emojis, but usually just one per message. Multiple emojis might be easy to ignore if you see them all the time, but listening to multiple emojis? It’s time-consuming, and if you want to know the truth, kind of a pain. If you are texting a friend who uses a screen reader, or if you want your tweet to be accessible to all, including those of us with visual impairments, here are some simple tips: Don’ts
If you use texts or tweets to market your business, your blog, your YouTube channel, remember that each of your tweets and texts sends a message out to your community. Approximately 300 million people in the world are visually impaired, and over 50 million of us are totally blind. Go easy on the emojis, and we’ll get the message too!
1 Comment
12/1/2019 01:19:07 am
I am using emojis when sending a message to add more emphasis on the message I am trying to send. If I am happy, then I will send a smiling emoji. But when I am sad, of course I will send the emojis that signify sadness. But when I am too frustrated and I am left with no words; when I couldn't speak how bad I really feel, I just let the emoji express howe disappointed I am. Fir me, it has been very helpful tool so you can express yourself even more. The trend on using emojis has been beneficial. But I sam sure it has its own consequences too.
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